Survival Drills: Bugging In

All the food, medical supplies, and ammo stocked up in your home will do nothing for you if you’re not prepared for what to do when a disaster strikes. There are many scenarios you should be preparing for with your family, so I’ll try to cover the most important ones in the coming weeks. To start, let’s talk about the most basic survival situation: bugging in.

If you plan on bugging in for any number of situations, it’s not always as simple as just staying at home in the event of a catastrophe or disaster. There are certain procedures you’ll want to perform, and time might be of the essence. Unless you live alone, you’ll need to make sure the whole family is on board, so meet together and plan this out together.

When it has been decided that you will bug in, and your family is all accounted for (this should be something you’ve already planned for) everyone will need to have a task.

First, you’ll have to secure your house and property and prepare weapons and other defense systems. Second, someone will need to have to take inventory of supplies you have and account for what you still need. Third, any last-minute supplies will need to be gathered if there is still time to go out and get them. There might be other tasks as well, calming and caring for small children or infants while other adults do the other tasks, making sure your any outdoor animals are accounted for, etc.

It will probably be relatively obvious who to assign tasks to. Adults will probably be the ones preparing weapons and securing the house, while older children or injured adults can take inventory or watch smaller children.

You will also want to make sure all of this is done within a realistic time frame of the emergency you are bugging in against. If there is a severe weather warning, know when the storm is expected to hit, for example.

So, to run the actual drill, once you’ve assigned each family member their task, practice the procedure and time it. This way, when the real deal occurs, you’ll know already roughly how long it will take you to properly hunker down.

Do your drill several times, addressing areas of weakness, moving things around, and reassigning tasks if necessary, then test these changes to make sure they will be effective.

When it comes to bugging in, you can greatly improve your chances of survival with this level of preparedness, so make sure your whole family is on board. You won’t want to figure these things out at the last minute.